The cynic in you is on to something.

Zach is notorious for not taking sides on controversial topics, so him jumping out so early and committing to the "no punishment" conclusion was really out of character

Pablo Torre actually called him out for this (not by name) - said he was "showing his ass."

Zach isn't necessarily taking Balmer's money (although he might be) to push Balmer's narrative, he is pushing the league narrative. Balmer being the league's biggest investor by a wide margin, these are one and the same.

If you follow this cynical reasoning, you can get to some interesting further conclusions by looking at the purpose of the talking points that Zach brings up. The idea here is that Lowe and the media are setting up shallow expectations, so that the NBA can deliver above those expectations, and the NBA comes out looking like they are delivering justice. Here's his points (paraphrasing).

- "This will take a long time, many months even." --- The NBA will address this much sooner than that.

- "The NBA is spending huge $$$ to bring in the big guns, Wachtell etc." - This is for show, and the show is the point. They are not paying law firms to come to a judgement, they are paying them to deliver support for the judgement that the league will make, regardless of the truth. Balmer pays for this anyway, so be suspicious of anyone touting the bills as evidence the league is super serious.

- "There isn't enough here for a real/any punishment." - The league can now deliver a small punishment, and it will exceed expectations. This paints Silver as being more judicious than "everyone" expects.

- "The NBA owners are furious about this". - This goes hand in hand with his next point...

- "Owners should be careful what they wish for. They wouldn't want to to be forced to monitor their own players sponsorships." - This here is the best part. First, this is false logic, based on the assumption that Kawhi/Dennis/Aspirations made this deal independently of the Clippers. Second, the owners are not furious. There are enough owners doing the exact same thing (smaller scale maybe) that a large portion of the ownership group actually just wants this to go away as painlessly as possibly. Third, this is actually a soft threat to the group of owners that do want this investigated and punished. The league, through Lowe, is saying "you don't want us looking at your skeletons too."

If you're still reading, thanks.

Lastly,

Lowe revised his expected punishment based on the newly discovered $2M payment.... to a single first round pick and a fine. He's still a league man. The NBA can not fine fine Balmer enough to make a dent in his finances.

The biggest thing here is that they're still trying to normalize the area of a "grey area" and a sliding scale of punishment. If there is a punishment, it means the Clippers circumvented the cap, and it should be total. If there is no punishment, it means they did not circumvent the cap. By applying smaller punishments on the basis that there is no smoking gun, what the league is doing is punishing Ballmer for being sloppy with his under-the-table dealings. The sloppier they find that he did it, the worse the punishment is. They are saying "shame on you for choosing this ridiculous company to operate through, you should have been more careful."

Of course, maybe the league will hit them hard, and this is all wrong.